| StoreTags: venue, club, laptop, live, knobs
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I've been rethinking my live setup- my goal is always to get it as interesting to me as possible but still as "bulletproof" as I can so it isn't a disaster.
Right now I use ableton on my laptop, where I have 8 tracks running - 4 drum tracks and 4 synth tracks. For each song I step through a series of scenes with different loops from the original album track playing, and I mess with filter plugins on the synth tracks, and beat repeat (with some subtlety unless I've been drinking) the drums. Mostly my control is from a little x-session, with some extra synth bits from a xiosynth (not really feeling that one though - tiny and not enough knobs to really do anything)
I have been trying to figure out how to rework my stuff with a couple goals - one to make it a bit more clubby - my stuff is comparable maybe to older solvent, casino vs. japan? -- the drums drop out a lot and they don't really drive the songs. the other is to make it more spontaneous- I would like to play some keys live (and not with some little two octacve board on a table - that feels rediculous) or if not play, at least tweak sounds while they're being sequenced off laptop... something that makes it more improv-friendly would be nice too, where I can call up a bunch of different combinations of fairly compatible loops. I was looking at the thing I attached a pic of - the x-keys - as a possibility.
So - any suggestions? I just have a series of club shows coming up, and although I'm going to just DJ electro stuff for several of them, it would be nice to have a live set that is truly different every time, and at least interesting for other electroonic music nerds to watch. | |
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11/13/06
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bla
this is what i did at my last show (stfu glasgow)- if its of any interest or inspiration
i had a single 8 beat loop playing on my mmt8 and used the midi track mute buttons to vary the sound so it never repeated exactly
i had 4 tracks of note data, 1 track of pitch bends, 1 of modulation data and volume changes together, 1 track of breath control and portamento time together and 1 track of program changes- i wouldve had them all on seperate tracks if there were enough tracks on an mmt8
with all tracks on it played an ok but kind of thin loop (it was all going to a dx100 which is monotimbral so the program changes cut off the sounds)
muting the pitch bend track would make it stick at whatever pitch it was just on
muting the modulation/volume track would make it stay all wobbly and loud or flat and quiet or whatever combination it happened to be on
muting the breath control/portamento time track would... well.. i dont really know what the breath control data was doing
the most dramatic effect came from muting the program change track which would make it stick on one program- so that 1 sound got all the notes/midi data
id hit the track mutes rapidly and as rhythmically as i could so thered be bursts of unexpected sounds all the time but always following the same rhythm
i think i drew it out to about 20 mins- obviously if i had more than 1 pattern it couldve gone on longer without getting boring but i think there was still enough variation so it didnt sound like it was just the same pattern over and over
it was quite stressful/intense to have to stay sharply focussed on moving my fingers at the right time for the whole set (im no real instrument player)
with more modern and versatile equipment theres a hell of a lot of scope for improvising live electronics
11/14/06
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dach
If you don't know this Ableton trick already I can totally recommend it..
First, install Midi Yoke (or some mac equiv.). This gives you virtual midi channels. Now in Abletons preferences, set it so remote control data can go out on NT1 (one of the virtual channels). Connect NT1 to NT2 in Midi Yoke, and have Abletons midi learn respond to NT2 aswell. Now you take a dummy clip (a silent wav file) and put it in a channel. Draw whatever envelopes you like for this clip. When you trigger the clip, you get patterns of midi controller data that you can use for automating a whole slew of things within Ableton. It can take some time to wire up your set with this trick, but if you assign the clips launch to your midi keyboard, you'll be able to pull off awesome sequences of midi control with just a single press on the keyboard...
try it with filter sweeps, pans, track volume gating for a stuttering effect, even toggle sequences of effects on and off in rythmic patterns. It'll cut down on that stressful mute button pushing style for sure.
11/14/06
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doofgoblin
still as "bulletproof" as I can so it isn't a disaster
what fun is playing a live show if it's "bulletproof?"
11/14/06
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emulsion
re: "bulletproof" - I've just done too many shows with guys who take 45 minutes to set up and then have technical problems all night - I'm trying to avoid that kind of nonsense.
edited: Nov 14 2006
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p
whoops wrong thread 
11/14/06
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emulsion
I've heard about that midi routing trick - it sounds super cool - will have to play around with it for sure.
I'm starting to get an idea for how I want to do this - I think I'll keep 8 tracks of audio, along with a few tracks of control data. I'll probably pick up something like that x-keys or a faderfox and assign one row of buttons to be mutes, one column of buttons will control prev scene/next scene etc. and all the rest will control individual clip triggers-- maybe I'll have a cluster of loops and ambient bits that aren't necessarily part of any track, and then trigger them directly with buttons.
I'm also thinking about getting a synth of some kind (I sold all my hardware a few years ago) that's cheap - maybe that SH-201 'cause it's $500 and just needs a USB cable connection. I'll probably go back to the original midi files from my tracks and integrate some of the melody parts into my Live set - so that way when the melody parts play on the synth I can fuck with the filters and stuff - or just mute them and play those parts myself live.
Anyway hope all these musings on this stuff help somebody else who's trying to sort out how to play live.
11/14/06
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emulsion
I'm still trying to figure out how to make my live set work more in the club - I'm thinking that maybe I can write some additional drum parts for every tune and trigger them seperately/additonally on top of the rest of the song...
I'm still not sure about getting seamless breaks from track to track. I don't want silence, and I've been using ambient seques most of this year, but ambient seques really take away a lot of the momentum. I can't exactly beatmatch tracks that are all over the place in terms of tempo either... I was fooling around with that in live and the timestretching makes it sound terrible.
Okay -- I'll stop thinking out loud now
11/15/06
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quip
i use live in the conventional sense but also an electribe sampler synced up to it with midi clock. both connected to a stanton scratch dj mixer the laptop with ableton is on one channel and the electribe on another. this works really well. i have some patterns on the electribe for each song and cut between the two sources on the dj mixer. you can get some nice cutting effects. also i can trigger live clips from the electribe pads. its quite a flexible setup and importantly very portable!
11/15/06
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emulsion
Quip that sounds really good! That would give me some tweakability that I don't really have with the laptop. I like the idea of the DJ mixer instead of a conventional one too. And I could still take a bus or train to gigs... very nice.
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